The Post-Apocalyptic Playground

There is something post-apocalyptic about an abandoned playground. It is the movie scene with the mushroom cloud in the distance, while the foreground is a landscape of sharply defined shadows, nobody and nothing left to push the swings except deadly atomic wind...

The first couple years of my daughters life, our routine was to run our errands, then stop at a park before heading home for lunch. So often the parks were completely, eerily empty. Sometimes we'd even drive from park to park hoping to find people - people like us. I met a plethora of nannies and grandmas, but no young stay-at-home moms like myself. I did meet older moms able to stay home after putting twenty years into their career, but it was difficult to relate. The trend, at least in Southern California, is to have children later in life. I suppose there is just too much fun to be had here. But was twenty-five a ridiculously young age to have had a child... I didn't think so.

It began to feel as though the birth of my daughter was the A-bomb that decimated my life, leaving my daughter, my husband and myself as the sole survivors. A habitual prayer of mine became a prayer for friends. God began to answer my prayer just in time, just before I became pregnant with my now four month old son, because secretly I was sick with dread at the prospect of going through the baby years alone again.

Although I am thouroughly thankful for this burguning network of support created by my new friends, I am realizing that there is a fundamental aspect of lonliness to being a mother of small children. The other day, preschool, runny noses, and conflicting naptimes conspired to land my kids and me back in the post-apocalyptic landscape of an empty playground. I sat in one swing with my son on my lap while my daugher played tinkerbell on the swing next to me, swinging on her belly and waving her plastic wand which lit up and chimed.

We were alone most of the hour we spend there, the exception being the point when homeless man came through the park, stopping at each trash can and methodically sorting the contents into black trashbags attached to some kind of wheeled cart. He was shirtless in the chilly autumn breeze, and his bent back was bronzed. A sweatshirt tied around his waist indicated that he had aclimated to a life outdoors.

Watching him I discovered that I too had aclimated - to motherhood. It was enough to feel my little son's warm body leaning back against my belly as we swung, and to see my daughter's radiant face as she acted out her fairy fantasy. My new friends were like that sweatshirt, not always necessary, but a good thing to have for when the weather turned on you.